Over the years, I have regularly read several columnists from all ends of the political spectrum.
One of my favorites on the conservative/libertarian end is Thomas Sowell, who retired from writing weekly columns last December. Sowell, an economist and political and social philosopher, has authored several books well worth a read. I don’t always agree with him and found myself doing so less and less in recent years. But I think it’s important to read and listen to as many opinions about issues as we can, and while Sowell is very good at articulating his views, he also has been one of my biggest writing influences.
With that in mind, I decided to write this column as a tribute of sorts to him. Every once in a while, Sowell would offer quick takes on random topics and call it “Random thoughts on the passing scene.”
So here are a few of mine, though not as short and random as his often were.
•It was heartwarming last week to hear that my classmate and baseball teammate from Dublin High School, Nelson Carswell IV, is running for a seat on the Dublin City Board of Education.
It’s been 10 years since we graduated and while most of our class may not have immediately picked Nelson back then as most likely to become a school board member, it’s never been in doubt that Nelson bleeds green and gold Fighting Irish blood, which is why we voted him as having the most school spirit. Nelson has translated that school spirit into a passion for the current and future students in the school system.
“My passion and drive to enrich every child in the Dublin City School System led me to run for this seat,” he wrote last week on Facebook. “I will be transparent regarding decision making and build a better public understanding of the board’s decisions.”
Too many people run for public office for the wrong reasons. I once interviewed a school board candidate who said he wanted to get into politics and thought the school board might be a good start. Being a school board member is a tough, often thankless job. It requires a wealth of knowledge and comprehension of complex financial issues and funding formulas that sometimes are flat-out absurd. It’s something you have to be in for the right reasons and the foremost reason ought to be fighting for public education and making sure our children get the very best they can.
Nelson understands that, and as my friend — and a first baseman who saved my rear-end a few times with some of my less-than-stellar throws from third — I’m happy to support him.
•It seems more and more these days we use the Constitution as a crutch of convenience, invoking it only when it suits our political interests. While the president has the constitutional power and authority to grant pardons, I can’t think of many things that violate the spirit of the sacred document more than pardoning a man who was more than happy to trample on the constitutional rights of American citizens. Yet that’s what Trump did Friday when he granted a pardon to former Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the immigration hardliner who was voted out of office last November and convicted in July of criminal contempt of court after he failed to heed a federal judge’s order to cease his racial profiling practices of detaining people on the mere suspicion they might be illegal immigrants. The pardon came on the same day Trump signed a directive ordering the Pentagon to ban transgender people from joining the military. Dictating that a certain group of people, physically and mentally capable, shouldn’t be allowed to serve their country how they choose is another blatantly un-American move and yet another decision not rooted in any sort of facts or logic.
But when you have no real ideas about moving the country forward in a constructive manner, I suppose culture wars are a good bet to fall back on.
•In fairness to Trump, he’s hardly the first president to have no problem ignoring the Fourth Amendment. The apparent “unmasking” by the NSA under President Obama is one of the latest egregious examples. You can say the same for the PATRIOT Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush and extended during the Obama administration.
•ESPN planted itself completely in the land of absurd last week when it pulled an Asian-American broadcaster named Robert Lee from a University of Virginia football game in the wake of recent events in Charlottesville and moved him to another game. The shifting explanations about how Lee’s name being so close to that of Confederate General Robert E. Lee (whose statue in Charlottesville has been at the forefront of a revived debate about Confederate monuments) would somehow make it inappropriate for him to call the game or make him an easy target for social media jokes are truly baffling. It also unfortunately cheapens and for some provides a way out of conversations we should all be having about who we memorialize and in what context it’s done.
But this is the latest nail in the proverbial coffin for a network that is continuing to sacrifice good sports journalism for quasi-entertainment. Most of the best reporters and writers have been let go while viewers instead get to hear Stephen A. Smith yell and hear that Lavar Ball could hit a 20-foot jumper over Jesus.
One bright spot to this whole Robert Lee episode was the joke I saw on social media: “It was a little heavy-handed replacing him with Bill Sherman.”
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Scott Thompson is the editor of the Barrow News-Journal. He can be reached at sthompson@barrownewsjournal.com.

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